SecretAsianMan

Again, I feel similarly. I'm on Season 2 of Arrow and haven't watched any of the rest except for the first episode of Flash (I'm attempting to watch them in a "chronological" order). They're super comic book soap opera and it's a huge contrast to the Netflix stuff but I'm having fun with it. Arrow at least is gritty in that he straight up kills people (at least in the beginning) but because it's a network show and therefore subject to broadcast standards there's not the buckets of blood and guts the Netflix shows seems to revel in. It's full of conveniences and nonsensical logic but, as you said in a goofy SyFy kind of way that I haven't watched in a while. Are the Arrowverse (god I hate that name) shows worth making a separate thread for? I'd like to discuss them more but I'd rather not be talking to myself <insert Goldblum noise>. I feel they should be kept separate from the Netflix stuff which is far different in tone and plot.

QTEs are a terrible thing on their own, but I remember God of War 3 (I think it was that one) having their button prompts appear on the edges of the screen that correspond to their placement on the controller. As in the bottom button prompt would appear at the bottom of the screen, the left on the left, etc. That way you didn't have to know what letter/symbol/color/shape/whatever was on the button, just it's relative position in the layout.

Button placement is one of the many outstanding issues I have with most controller designs. I've long been irritated that for almost all controller actions are located on the front of the controller where sticks/d-pads are. The introduction of triggers and shoulder buttons helped some but that still leaves four (or three depending on how you hold it) fingers that could be doing something, ANYTHING else. Stuff like the Steam controller or the Xbox One Elite controller are better still in that they have paddles on the back that can also activate face buttons, but I want a controller with all buttons on the back. Things like how I position my hand on the controller shouldn't have such a large impact on how I actually play the game.

Ugh. I didn't watch it at all despite it sitting in my queue all weekend. Every time I went to try my brain screamed at me to stop so instead I started watching the OTHER tv comicbook universe (Arrow). From what I've heard I really don't want to watch it but I'm afraid of missing something in the Defenders because they're trying really hard to tie all these together. I'm a dumb plot guy who hates missing out on details like that. Maybe I should just read a plot summary.

That pretty well sums up how I feel about everything thus far too. Despite my trepidation I will probably watch Iron Fist, but I anticipate it being a slog.

I really got into the 360 TF2 community as well. At one point I was even part of a "clan" that expanded so much it eventually split into three other groups. The one I was part of even tried to get some kind of tournament scene going among the community at large but it fell apart once it became apparent the consoles would never receive the PC updates. I'm still friends with a couple of those people even today and it remains the only place I've made friends online that I have subsequently met in real life.

One thing I'm not especially hopeful for is the introduction of a loot system. The runes in the first game were sort of loot but I honestly never found them to have a significant impact on how I played. For the most part they acted as mini-boosts rather than straight up stat changes. I'm worried that introducing leveled loot is going to be a grind or make it a reward based loop rather than just straight up gameplay. I want the enjoyment to come from playing the game, not from getting a marginally better sword.

Random thoughts from this episode: The plot of Blank Check is that a young kid's bike gets run over by a thief who gives him a blank check to buy a new one. The kid fills out the check for $1 million then spends it while pretending to be the assistant to a "Mr. Macintosh". The adult female he has a crush on is an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a bank teller. After typical kid movie shenanigans, the bad guys are arrested and the kid gets a kiss ON THE LIPS from the adult lady. They don't end up together at the end but agree to go on a date in six years. The eyes of Cars cars are their windshields so a chandelier of headlights wouldn't be the equivalent of human eyes. To my knowledge, there's only one car that violates this rule. Its even weirder in this case because she sells headlights, or from her perspective eyes. I was hoping that Jake was going to try and make some Alexa infinite loop by telling it to skip forward into the podcast to a point where he tells it to skip back to the initial skip.

While I don't totally disagree, the same could be said about each individual show and thus far the high points of those shows aren't the moments where fist meets face. I don't anticipate it to be like the Avengers where it's just a lot of eye candy. There are absolutely going to be some fights but in my mind they've established enough credit with the shows that I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt here. Keep in mind I'm saying all this before having seen Iron Fist.

You might be right, I really don't have a clear memory of the game.

I never played the multiplayer but I remember reading that the single saber heavy stance was considered the best because the other two saber styles don't have stances and heavy stance basically broke through all defenses if used properly. Dumb nerdy rant that has no relevance to the game:

That's what I'm banking on too.

It's a Star Wars video game so they need showy Force stuff? Have you gotten to the point where you can choose different lightsaber styles (ie single saber, dual sabers, or saber staff)? I remember playing with dual sabers and finding it way more fun. If memory serves the staff isn't particularly useful.

Believe me, I have bags of those things everywhere. Its the time between when I run out and getting more that it drives me nuts.

A game where you play as a pissed off Bilbo wrecking Mordor's shit up would be amazing. That last one made me laugh.

I finished up Daredevil last night. Despite my previous confessions of liking the action (which I still do) I think the parts of the season I found the most interesting were the parts where he wasn't DD. I was pretty into the Punisher's trial (minus the conspiracy portion) and really dug some of the great moments it gave Foggy. It also shows what a shitty person Matt Murdock is. He drags Foggy into something he REALLY doesn't want to get involved in then makes him do all the work (even though it ends up being some of Foggy's best moments) and toys with Karen even though he has to realize what a bad idea it is. If he didn't intend on telling her almost right away he was DD, how the hell did he expect to not hurt her like he did? Also, Karen supposedly having really good journalistic chops and yet not at all wondering about the elderly blind guy holding a huge knife in Matt's apartment while the hot girl is lying in his bed seemed really out of place to me but whatever. He's also an arrogant jerk, refusing to accept help he clearly needs and deciding that attacking the Hand head on is a good idea despite the fact that he was getting his ass kicked by them until Stick literally tells him how to win. Speaking of the Hand, I didn't really care for a lot of the DD side of the plot. Early on in his first fight with Punisher he gets shot in the head and for a while seems to have suffered some hearing loss from it, but this went nowhere. I was hoping it was going to be a recurring problem he would have to deal with but nope. Everything involving the Hand seemed pretty dumb too. Matt continually dismissing the "mysticism" of the group would have been fine, except this is a post-Avengers world where literal gods and monsters are known quantities. DD doesn't quite hit you over the head with the MCU as much as the other shows do but its still supposed to exist in this continuity so I find his skepticism a little baffling. I didn't much care for the season's ending either. It didn't actually address any of the questions that were brought up and felt like a cheap way out. I think so far of the three shows I liked Jessica Jones the most. I'll see what Iron Fist is like but I'm really skeptical. Early previews are not encouraging and I have some pretty big issues with the original comic that seem like they're carried on in the series. I admit I am excited for The Defenders though. I'm a sucker for these team ups.

Goldblum's character is the Grandmaster. The Grandmaster belongs to a group called the Elders of the Universe, one of whom is the Collector. They aren't a single race themselves but they're close enough. One of my favorite dumb things about the Grandmaster is his involvement in one of the Marvel/DC crossover comics that pitted the Avengers against the Justice League.

Random teeth thoughts: I have a slight gap between my top left canine and the adjacent premolar. Aesthetically it doesn't bother me but whenever I bite into something meaty like a steak I inevitably get some stuck in there and it drives me NUTS. As a result I end up flossing a lot. I totally understand the logic behind it, but I still find it strange that a lot of people around me keep toothbrushes at their desk. I brush on a regular morning/evening basis but I legitimately never thought about keeping a toothbrush at work. Masticate is a pretty good word.

I am also of the general opinion that having an ad-free version is good. While I generally enjoy the way ads are read and greatly prefer them to other podcasts that just read words off a page, I haven't yet switched my feed over to the ad-less version. I've actually used some of the services advertised before. There's been a number of requests in the past on the forums for a central listing of the services advertised and their associated promo codes. If that existed then I'd swap feeds.

I'm trucking along with Daredevil Season 2 and one thing I've noticed I'm enjoying more is the action sequences. Jessica Jones was a great detective story and psychological study. Luke Cage was very urban and motivated. But despite both characters having super strength, I found the action bits lacking. Granted both of them only really face one opponent that poses them a significant physical threat (Jessica facing the Kilgraved Luke Cage and Luke facing the power suited Diamonback) but those fights just weren't interesting to me apart from the story context. One thing I really appreciated in the first season of Daredevil and I'm glad seems to be continuing on is the action choreography. The fights are very showy with lots of unnecessary flips and other moves, but I find them far more entertaining than the other shows. Hopefully Iron Fist will deliver in this respect too (although I have other reservations about that show, most of which stem from issues I have with the comic itself).

Following up my previous post about my co-worker leaving and me getting stuck with all his work, today is effectively his last day here which means I need to get as much turnover from him as possible. Except that I'm sick as a dog and feel like complete shit. But I have no choice except to come in and likely infect everyone around me with my constant coughing and sneezing because he's leaving tomorrow. This place is literally killing me. I'm going to die here. Stupid sense of responsibility.

I've been sick the last few days which gave me the time to finish up both Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Overall I liked JJ better. As I stated before the framing of a detective story really worked for me. I liked how her powers were almost irrelevant to the show. They came in handy certainly but the show isn't really about them. And while I would normally want it, I felt it was a smart move not to explore too heavily into the origin of her powers. One thing I would have liked a bit more exploration on is how she became immune to Kilgrave but I won't dwell on it. LC was only ok to me. It was too much of a gangster story with some vibes of blacksploitation thrown in. I have nothing against either of those things, they just don't do it for me. I found a lot of the decisions made on both sides questionable with respect to their goals. I also disliked the heavy reliance on the MCU. In JJ the presence of the MCU was subtle and understated giving reasonable context to the people's perception of a superpowered individual among them. In LC it was made into a central plot element. From the special bullets made of alien metal to the powered suit* that's used in the climax the show makes you very aware that it exists in the Avengers' world, to the show's detriment in my opinion. I do have to admit though I like the use of Claire to tie the Netflix shows together. One thing that bothered me about both shows (and also bothered me about Daredevil) was the level of violence. Its especially bad in JJ which has straight up dismemberment in it. In JJ it works to show just how twisted Kilgrave is but I still found it off putting. I get the gritty realism but you can do that without resorting to buckets of blood. I've started watching Season 2 of Daredevil and I think based on a casual reference to Frank Castle in Luke Cage that season 2 is supposed to take place before LC. Oh well. *As an aside, I found it amusing that Hammertech was the brand of choice for all of these since it was portrayed as laughably incompetent in Iron Man 2 up until Vanko fixed it.

Just a heads up to everyone out there, a service called Cloudflare posted a report about a memory leak that affects a lot of websites and users. Long story short, a bunch of user data was made vulnerable for the past few months. I'm not aware of a complete list of sites yet but at the very least I know Patreon, Discord, Medium, and Uber are among them. I know people around here use those so it's probably a good idea to change your passwords now just in case. If anyone else hears about a major site affected by this post it here. Making this a new topic so this doesn't get overlooked.

Good to know, I'll resend my reader mail to IIT.

Should we relegate all video game related reader mails to the idlethumbs.net email or are both valid for Important If True? Also, regarding flamethrowing power lines, most very high voltage transmission lines use bare conductors. This is for a number of reasons, the main one being cost. Insulating that much wire is very expensive. Cables closer to the ground that a person is more likely to reach are insulated but cables that the drone would likely be used on are probably bare and largely not affected by a fire spewing robot.